


spare change

by Anonymous



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Gen, TAZ Amnesty, blame them on younger me, character introspection, focused on Kirby's view of Ned + his motivations, written on june 9 2019 so if there are later episodes or revelations that make this null?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28008003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Kirby is just. Glad to help.
Relationships: Edmund "Ned" Chicane & Kirby
Kudos: 6
Collections: Anonymous





	spare change

**Author's Note:**

> I've been going through old unpublished fics that i have no memory of writing tonight, and publishing a lot of them. I wrote this on June 9, 2019.
> 
> It's published because one line hit me super hard while reading it, and I am inordinately proud of younger me.

Kirby starts the Lamplighter in his senior year of high school with the dream of bringing Kepler back into the online cryptid sphere, and in a much more personal bid to fund his artistic dreams and avoid working at the Pizza Hut indefinitely. By his graduation, it’s raking in a budget smashing $3 per month. He keeps working at the Pizza Hut. 

He’s far from the only cryptid blogger in West Virginia, but the Lamplighter is still his- he doesn’t have to share it or explain it or justify it. So he keeps at it. He gets to know the town legends even better, meets some of the area’s more prominent, slightly-insane bigfoot fanatics, and makes one or two friends his age who think cryptids are pretty cool. Unlike the losers at Pizza Hut.   
He even gets paid to do a big mural by local swindler Ned Chicane, who sees some of his art at the monthly get-together Veronica puts together at the Cryptonomica.   
The site is not what he’d planned, but he can still appreciate how much color it’s brought into his life. 

It takes another 2 years, but Kirby still has to call his mom and ask her to check his math when he realizes he can cover all his expenses from the revenue the Lamplighter is bringing in. The Pizza Hut sucks, and Kirby quits as soon as possible. 

And then his internet gets capped. 

As it turns out, if you no longer have to work 8 hours a day, and instead spend all your time running a moderately popular website, you use a lot more internet. And if you use a lot more internet, but only pay for the lowest tier, you get capped. 

Kirby is asked to leave every one of the 3 cafes in town within the week. Something about him sitting there for 5 hours straight unnerved customers. Or it was just that he wasn’t buying anything. 

Ned Chicane cuts him a deal at the next Cryptonomica meeting, and the rest is sort of history. Kepler is a small town, and the news about Kirby’s success with the Lamplighter traveled fast. His new quid-pro-quo with Ned seems to travel faster: by the end of the month, some of his old classmates corner him while he’s shopping to ask if he’s being blackmailed.

He denies it profusely, but they don’t seem to believe him. Having spent very little time with Ned, Kirby doesn’t know why the unfounded accusation upsets him so much. 

He sticks around, even after business picks up again. Ned is a funny guy, and even if he definitely has a billion stolen goods in his back room, he’s a good person. Kirby off-handedly mentions he’s been drinking a lot of soda from the vending machine, and the price goes down five cents the next day. Ned doesn’t try to hide it, he just says something about not paying him and blusters away. 

For a guy who clearly doesn’t believe in monsters, Ned gives a lot of himself to the Cryptonomica. For a guy who doesn’t believe in people, he gives a lot of himself to the town. Kirby can respect that. 

By the time Kirby realizes that Bigfoot is definitely real and Ned Chicane is covering for him, he’s been helping out at the Cryptonomica for years. Ned has done a thousand little kindnesses, for Kirby and for absolute strangers, tourists who lose their wallets or take a wrong turn, and Keplerians who just want a laugh.   
If he had to rank people by how much he respected them, Kirby would probably rank Ned over the Sherrif. He can’t explain why, because Ned should definitely be in jail judging by his weird stolen goods collection. He can’t explain why he’d lie to an FBI Agent if Ned asked, or help... harbor? a kidnapped Ryan Gosling. And when Ryan Gosling takes off his watch and turns into a goat, and the ground underneath them starts to vibrate, Kirby can’t explain why he trusts Ned to solve whatever is happening while he shows Gosling his own finest works. 

Even while he’s driving around town is Ned’s stupid, stupid van, he doesn’t know if it’s because he owes Ned, or if he’s doing it as a favor, or if he earnestly believes that Ned wouldn’t ask him to do this if it wasn’t important. Even when another cloud of vape smoke makes its way through the van’s open windows, even when he very awkwardly makes eye contact with another Hornet, and even when “Ned” tells everyone to go to the gate, Kirby is just glad he can help. 

He wishes he hadn’t paid too much attention to that broadcast, now. It didn’t make sense that Ned would protect Bigfoot and the Goatman of all people just to turn around and sell them out- not Ned. Any other person, maybe. But even when Ned fucks up, he never leaves a friend to deal with the consequences.   
The man on the TV is not Ned. So Kirby drives to the Cryptonomica and falls asleep in the back of the van, waiting for Ned to show up so he can help however he is needed. 

Later, when he tries to figure out why he would follow Ned to the ends of the earth- literally, to a portal to a different planet- he can’t. He has to write it all down for his speech, but all he can say is that Ned never changed the price on the vending machine back, even when Kirby had extra cash and Ned had none.

Kirby wakes up to the van door slamming and Ned in the driver’s seat. Ned might be surprised to see him, but he shakes it off and asks for updates on the gate. Some cameras are hooked up to the video feeds, so Kirby dutifully rambles off what he sees while he tries to catch up with whatever is happening. 

Ned tells him to keep an eye on the cameras, to give him a heads up if anyone more heavily armed starts in their direction. 

Kirby is just. Glad to help. 

The van shakes, he hears a lot of yelling, then a gunshot, and the van screens show him grainy footage of Ned falling, Ned lying on the ground, Ned bleeding. He can’t bring himself to open the van doors. He can’t help. He can’t do anything. He should’ve listened to the Not-Ned, and come here alone. 

A week later, Ned Chicane is lying in a coffin. 

Kirby doesn’t know what to say. He can’t explain why, but he doesn’t want to say anything less than perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> The part this was published for? It's the vending machine bit. What the fuck. is that canon? it's been over a year i have no idea
> 
> me? posting amnesty fanfic in 2020 despite not having listened to amnesty in over a year? it's more likely than you'd think


End file.
